Jofish's References on Smell

N.B. These is my personal annotated bibliography for my Master's thesis, Symbolic
Olfactory Display, which contains a selection of these references.

In its publicly accessibly implementation, no internal links work, as they
are for my reference alone and I cannot allow access as they're for my personal
academic research, under the terms of all sorts of copyright stuff.

However, I feel the bibliography alone may be of use to others engaged in
similar areas of research.

You may wonder why some of the articles are placed in the categories they
are. So do I, looking back. Generally, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Suggestions are welcomed. I take no responsibility for the relevence of any
comments to you, your interests or your research: all comments are intended
for my use and relevence. I also take no responsibility for categorization:
in general, papers were placed in those subdivisions for my person use at the
time. My personal summaries may not reflect the content of the papers in any
way shape or form and should not be seen as commentaries on their content.

Cultural Differences

Ayabe-Kanamura, S., Saito, S., Distel, S., Martínez-Gómez, and
Hudson, R. Differences and Similarities in the Perception of Everyday Odors.
A Japanese-German Cross-Cultural Study. Annals of the New York Academy of Science.
694-700

Design

Bates, Elizabeth. The Emergence of Symbols. Cognition and Communication During
Infancy. Academic Press: New York: London: 1979. -- So maybe we could build
an analogy in development of olfactory signals?

Gaver, William W. Technology Affordances. Proceedings of CHI 1991, ACM Press,
1991. -- An affordance is what an object suggests you can do with it, such
as Don Norman's doorhandles. Good tech design does the same.

Dougill, D. Moses Pendleton's baseball ballet does not reach first base with
David Dougill. Sunday Times, December 3, 1995. Lexis-Nexis.

English National Opera: Personal
Email; Fax-- from
Jane Livingston, Head of Press. Email: 1988-90. director was Richard Jones.
The production was televised by BBC from Opera North and the BBC inserted Scratch
and Sniff cards into copies of the Radio Times magazine. Fax: Extract from 'The
Narrow-Smeller' , an extract from 'Earwitness' by Elias Canetta, trans. J. Neugroschel
(Andre Deutsch, 1979); originally published as 'Der Ohrenzeuge: Funfzig Charakters',
Carl Hanser Verlag,Munich.

O'Mahony, M. 1978. Smell illusions and suggestion: reports contingent on tones
played on television and radio. Chemical Senses and Flavor 3(2) 183-188. --
Reports of an experiment in which Granada Television, UK, reported to viewers
that they would play a tone corresponding to a particularl smell and that viewers
should call in if they smelt anything unusual; they were told it would be a
non-manure country smell. A standard Dolby testing tone was played and a picture
of an oscilloscope shown. Viewers were asked to write in if they smelt anything
or, in particular, if they didn't smell anything. The next morning the explanation
and tones were given again on a radio show. The same tones were played.

A total of 179 responses were received as being sent and clearly postmarked
in the twenty-four hours following the show, with a further 37 sent later, out
of an approximate viewing audience of three million - this is a high response
rate in the industry. 114 individuals and a further 49 in groups (generally
husband/wife) responded to the television and a further 43 responded to the
radio. 37/179 reported 'hay', 27/179 reported 'grass'', and so on. 24/179 reported
no smell. Of the radio group, 21/43 reported no smell.

This paper makes fascinating reading, mainly as to the powers of suggestion.

Learning, Education & Memory

Cain, William S. What we remember about odors. Perfumer & Flavorist, Vol
9 June/July 1984 p17-21 -- A great chart of item-by-item M/F odor identification.
Best: coffee, peanut butter, vicks. Worse lighter flud, cough syrup. Men better
at only a few, including mothbals, much better at ammonia and Brut.

Cann & Ross 1999 -- Olfactory stimuli as context cues in human memory.
American Journal of Psychology, 102, 91-102 -- Different odors have no effect
on attraciveness ratings. Presence of same smell at recall is good.

Eichenbaum, H. Using Olfaction to Study Memory. Annals of the New York Academy
of Sciences (Nov 30, 1998) 855, 657-669

Engen, Trygg. Remembering Odors and their Names. American Scientist, September-October
1997. p497-503.-- long and short term remembering. we can remember about
sixteen - channel capacity. similar to vision. episodic odors just stay on,
where as laboratory odors die off slower than laboratory pictures, but still
not great. lists example where present twelve common odors, and typically only
can identify six. textbooks still present Henning's prism, even though it obviously
has nothing to do with how smells are arranged. tip-of-the-nose. further experiments
to identify odors.

Engen, Trygg. Odor Sensation and Memory. Praeger Publishers, New York. 1991.
-- # of receptors, 'sense of smell is a paragon of a sensor', reaction time
is 130ms approx = other senses, unfamilar/familiar and liked/disliked, two-smell
interactions, short term memory, olfactory dB reference, menstrual synchronization,
babies learn to smell their mothers, FX of psychology: the three bottles dem.
any person can identify only 50% of common doros, hormonal effects and sex differences
in smell perception.

Engen, Trygg, Gilmore, Magdalena M., and Mair, Robert G. Odor Memory. in Smell
and Taste in Health and Disease, T.V. Getchell et. al. Eds., Raven Press, New
York 1991. -- no good at waking. arousal vs. working memory. odor and aging,
brain disease.

Herz, R.S. Are Odors the Best Cues to Memory? A Cross-Modal Comparison of Associative
Memory Stimuli. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (Nov 30, 1998) 855,
670-674. -- odors are equivelant to other stiumuliin their ability to elecit
accurate recall but that odor-evoked memoriesare always more emotional.

Herz, R.S. The effects of cue distinctiveness on odor-based context-dependent
memory. Memory & Cognition, 1997, 25(3), 375-380.-- target words are
evaluated faster if preceed by an odor with similar affect.

Herz, R.S. and Cupchik, GC. The effect of hedonic context on evaluations and
experience of paintings. Empirical studies of the arts, Vol 1!(2) 147-166, 1993.--
all aesthetic evaluations of paintings where intensified when odor cue and painting
hedonically congruent. evaluation of the most potent paintings less impacted,
and women more sensitive.

Holloway, M. The Ascent of Scent. Scientific American (Nov 1999), 42-44. A
profile of Rachel Sarah Herz. Area of research- the connection between memory
and odor

Jehl, C., Murphy, C., Developmental Effects on Odor Learning and Memory in
Children. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (Nov 30, 1998) 855, 632-634
-- Ability to name and remember smells is age-dependent and changes over
adolesence. NB on back of White.

Laird, D. 1935 What can you do with your nose? Scientific Monthly, 41, 126-130.
HUMANITIES Q.S423 -- 'anecdotal style' evidence that association of odors with
past events is common. and slightly higher in women.

Rubin, D.C., Groth, E., and Goldsmith,D. J. (1984) Olfactory cuing of autobiographical
memory. American Journal of Psychology, 97, 493-507 HUMANITIES JOURNAL BF.A498
-- Memories evoked by odors are less thought of and less discussed prior
to the experiement and were more likely to be reported as never been thought
of or discussed. There was a suggestion that odors might evoke more pleeasant
and emotional memory than other types of cues.

Schab 1990 -- Odors and the remembrance of things past. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 16, 648-655 DEWEY BASEMENT (DUBLIN
PER 150 ) Bl 2nd Fl. / PER 150. -- Three experiments examine effectiveness
of odors as memory retreival cues. Exp.1 shows single ambient odor present on
learning and testing improved recall over non-odor control and over odor at
just learning or testing. Exp 2. replicated and showed that reinstating did
imporove overall recall, recall of odor-related information was not significantly
enhanced by the door cue. Exp. 3 showed that the same odor must be present on
both learning and remembering for the learning benefit to occur.

DG Smith, Standing & de Man, 1992 - Verbal memory elicted by ambient odor.
Perceptual & Motor Skills, 74 339-343.-- If smell A is present at learning,
recall is better if smell A is present at remember, as opposed to smell B.

Mochizuki, K., Suzuki, Y., Kihara. T, Yano, F., Ninimija, S.P., The
Arresting Effect of Fragrance on Inclining Sleep. Annual International Conference
of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Vol. 12, No. 5, 1990,
p. 2051 -- Smell of lemon will wake you up, but only if you had enough sleep
the night before. Jasmine and lavender were not effective.

Human Relations and Smell

Baron, R. A. (1988) Perfume as a tactic of impression management in social and
organizational settings. in Perfumery: The psychology and biology of fragrance,
van Toller, Steve and Dodd, George H., Eds. London, New York: Chapman & Hall.

Broom, Robert. A contribution to the comparitive anatomy of the Organ of Jacobson.
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh v 39 pg 231-255 1897. -In
man it is quite rudimentary.

Comfort, Alex. Likelihood of human pheromones. Nature 230, 432 1971. SCI JOURNAL
Q.N286 TCD PER 85-38 SLIP 24/11/00 -- "Humans have a complete set of
organs which are traditionally described as non-functional, but which, if seen
in any other mammal, would be recognised as part of a pheremone system. These
include apocrine glands associated with conspicuous hair tufts, some of which
do not produce sweat and must presumaly produce some other functioning secretion."

Cowley JJ and Brooksbank BWL. The effect of two odours compounds on performance
in an assessment of people test. Psychoneuroendocrinology 2, 159 (1977). SCH-PLG
J QP.P9737 or 1995+online TCD PER 76-19 -- Women rate photographs of men
better when they're breathing androstenol and worse when they're breathing an
aliphatic acid mixture found in vaginal secretions of primates. Hypothesis that
one is male-female, the other female-female communication.

Cowley, JJ and Brooksbank, BWL. (1991) Human exposure to putative pheromones
and changes in aspects of social behavior. The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry
and Molecular Biology 39 647-659. SCI J QP.J868 TCD Hamilton Library PER 574
1969-1990 -- When women are exposed to androstenol but not fatty acids they
have higher rates of social exchanges with men. Hm.

Desor J.A. and Beauchamp, Gary 1974. The human capacity to transmit olfactory
information. Perception and Psychophysics 16:551-556. -- Compares single
chemical odors vs. smells of whole things. Does not, in fact, seem to be about
the human capacity to transmit olfactory information but rather the capacity
to receive. Eit.

Dill, J. Gregory. The Lost Art
of Nauscopie. Ocean Navigator 79, Jan/Feb 1997. -- Obscure french civil
servant circa 1762 invents now-lost method of consistantly predicting when ships
will arrive, four days before they appear, by a method of sensing distruption
of chemical contents of the water.

Gilbert, Avery Nelson, Friedlund Alan J, and Sabin John. (1987) Hedonic and
social determinants of facial displays to odors. Chemical Senses 12(2) 355-363.
-- Had subjects smell scents and were videotaped. 87% of the time when subjects
posed to imagined or real odors; when they didn't know they were being videotaped,
was only identifiable 37% of the time.

Gladstone, Brooke and Hirsch, Dr.Alan. Smell
Disorders. OnHealth Webcast 19 Oct 1999. http://onhealth.webmd.com/home/live/ohlive/archive/item,51406.asp-- When people lie they touch their noses and lean forward and don't use
contractions. And erectile tissue in the nose. And smell disorder treatments.
and some figures on penile blood flow changes with a whole bunch of different
smells. Ethnic groups.

Harper's Magazine. "Scenting a Generation Gap." March 1992, p28.--
Different generations find different smellscomforting. People who were
children in the 50s find natural smells, woodsmoke, pine, etc. comforting. People
who were children in the seventies find many artificial smells comforting: crayolas,
Play-Doh, Windex, marijuana, tuna casserole, downy fabric softner, cocoa puffs

Hirsch AR. Effect of an Ambient Odor on slot-machine usage in a Las Vegas casino.
Biological Psychiatry 33 (6A) A152-152 Suppl. S Mar 15 1993 -- So there's
this smell, which he doesn't say what it is, that increases slot machine usage
by 33% when it's in the air.

Kirk-Smith MD and Booth DA. (1987) Chemoreception in human behaviour: experimental
analysis of the social effects of fragrance. Chemical Senses 12(1) 159-166.
-- Review article. Partiuclarly looking at non-pheremonal. Reports men &
women rated photographed men and women as sexier and softer and their own mood
as more sexy in the presence of Shalimar perfume.

Kirk-Smith, Michael, Booth DA, Carroll D, Davies P. Human
Social Attitudes Affected by Androstenol. Research Communications in Psychology,
Psychiatry and Behavior. Vol. 3 No. 4 1978. -- This is the paper that says
'androstenol made the photographed women appear sexually more attractive in
the judgement of both men and women, with a conceptually related and weaker
effect on judgements about the photographed men.' Boom, there it is.

Knight-Ridder Tribune. Stench capsule may be rape detterent. Arizona Republic
27 March 1994. -- Some guy has come up with mercaptan capsule for rape prevention.
Great line about "And think of the particular poetry of it: after years
of being told they need to use 'feminine hygiene sprays' to make them smell
more attractive, women can turn the tables and actually make themselves so putrid
that men will run screaming into the night." which is interesting from
a feminist ownership yaknow kinda thing.

Monti-Block, Luis, C Jennings-White, DS Dolbert and DL Berliner. 'The human
vomernasal systems' Psychoneuroendocrinology 19 673 (1994) TCD PER 76-19 --
There is a human VNO. Chemicals that produce an electrical response in the VNO
do not necessarily produce an electrical response in the olfactory epithelium
and vice versa. (IE, just because we can't smell a chemical doesn't mean it
does nothing.) Different responces were produced by certain chemicals in men
and women.

Motluk, A. Heavenly Scent. New Scientist 3 July 1999. -- smell conveys information.
little old lady armpit smell can make you happy. reporting ondenise chen
of monell chemical senses center. young men make you depressed.

Motluk, A. The Scent of Fear. New Scientist 1 May 1999. -- people can recognise
the difference between happy and fearful. well, everyone can smell fearful men.
and most women can smell happy men. but men can't smell emotions.

Nass, Clifford, Steuer, Jonathan, and Tauber, Ellen R. (1994) Computers
Are Social Actors. Proceedings of CHI '94 (Boston, MA.) p72-78. --
We treat computers as if they were people. This is interesting in the context
of computers that can produce smells, and the rest of this section.

Smith, Kathleen and Sines, Jacob.
Demonstration of a Peculiar Odor in the Sweat of Schitzophrenic Patients.
Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol 2 184-188. -- [Some] schitzophrenics
have an odor that can be distinguished from non-schitzophrenics. (But it seems
that the group was selected such on the basis of [schitzophrenic] and [has the
smell], and there was no testing of those diagnosed with schitzophrenia and
without the smell.

Weller, Aron and Weller, Leonard. 'Menstrual synchrony between mothers and
duaghters and between roommates.' Physiology and Behaviour, 53, 943 (1993).
SCI JOUR QP.P5785 no dbase TCD Hamilton PER 574 -- mothers & daughers
vs. women sharing a room in a private residence vs. women sharing a room in
dormitory. make some conjectures about corresponding degrees of interaction
with each other, other women, men. mothers & daughters in same domicile
display significant synchronicity. Roomates in private residences also, but
not significantly more than dorms.

Weiner, Harry, External Chemical Messengers II: Natural History of Schizophrenia.
New York State Journal of Medicine. v67 p1144 1967. -- Introduces the theory
that schizophrenia is a state of excessive awareness of other people's chemical
emissions. Explores case studies & histories of this. Schizophrenic language.
(very interesting.)

Weiner, Harry, External Chemical Messengers III: Mind & Body in Schitzophrenia.
New York State Journal of Medicine. v67 p1286 1967.-- Continues. allophobic
(gives off negative ECM) vs. likable. 75% psychiatrists effective with schiz
patents, 25% not - but that 25% more effective with neurotic. empathy, etc.
More on that arguably flawed experiment about schizophrenia smell, Smith &
Sines. Fx of psilocybin, LSD: increased sensory inc. olfactory sensing. Side
fx of psychoactive drugs: possibly decrease ECM sensitivity? (This could start
to explain loss of sexual appetite that happens in conjunction with prozac,
xanax, etc.) Strindberg describes his wife's long-range awareness "Her
moods I could perceive from afar as a sense between taste and smell, without
being either... the scent was not a scent and the flavor was not a flavor. Hyperodors
they were and hypersavors." Schizophrenics seem to be able to read psychiatrist's
emotions.

Watson, Lyall. Jacobson's Organ and the Remarkable Nature of Smell. WW Norton
& Company, New York, 2000. -- Overview of the role of jacobson's organ
(the VNO) in primarily human interaction. Topics include history of VNO, tiger
in Sanskrit means 'vyagra' from the word 'to smell', studies with androgen and
androstenol, menstrual cycles, East African rodent Liphiomys, cranial
nerves (briefly), tree communication!, plant communication using salicylic acid,
schitzophrenia, all incense comes from myrrh, frankincense, laudanum, galbanum
and styrax, all are resins known respectively as balsa, olivanum, onycha, asa
foetida and balm of Gilead from desert shrubs in Arabia and North Africa, they
are biochemically remarkably similar to human hormones, perfume and personality
types, Erox, synethestic language (touch -> taste -> smell but not other
direction), kodo, stero smell,nautoscopy.

Lorig, T.S., Elmes, G.E., Yoerg, V.L., Chemosensory
Alteration of Information Processing. Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences (Nov 30, 1998) 855, 591-597.-- The effects of odor on cognition
are mixed. Lists references. Then I don't understand what they did.

History of Smell

Cain, W. History of Research on Smell. in Handbook of Perception, Volume VIA,
Tasting and Smelling, Carterette, E. C., and Friedman, M. P. (eds). Chapter
6. -- history of research. great boring quote about much written, little
said. good big picture.

Le Guérer, A. Translated by Miller, R. Scent - The Mysterious and Essential
Powers of Smell. Turtle Bay Books, New York 1992. -- wide ranging and diverse.
perfume as a tool of satan, witches and smells, smell and recognition of the
other, ethnic identity and smell, philosophy's reactions to smell, description
of kodo. more specifically: p10 "the adult male has no vomeronasal organ",
13 schitzophrenia, smell bypasses thalamus straight to rhinencephalon, 38 plague=smell,
theriac, 89-93 mummies!, 120-6 saints, sap & blood, p184 Nietzsche: "The
nose, for example, of which no philosopher has ever spoken with veneration and
gratitude - the nose is, abeit provisionally, the most delicate instrument at
our disposal: it is an instrument capable of recording the most minimal changes
of movement, changes that escape even spectroscopic detection.", 190 no
VNO again, freud, photographer Joseph Breitenbach aura of the scents eminating
from flowers??, odorama & games of identifying odors.

McCartney, W. Olfaction and Odours, An osphresiologoical essay. Springer-Verlag,
Berlin, Germany, 1968. -- Hellen Keller, scientists don't study smell, historical
(1691 richard boyle,england) through major papers published to 1968, , vibratory
1919, construction of an odor test room, smell in literature, hennig's prisim
of smell, smells of solids, men smell better than women. dogs, birds, fish,
savages, the blind, EJ Parry quote p111 "There have been numerous attempts
at the classification of odours, all of which have been empirical and useless
and most of which have been childish and absurd." in The Class. of Odors
in Perf. Ess. Oil Rec. 7 129-132 1916. Do rocks, metals smell, p112 skunk=n-butylmercaptan,
smell through the blood, male vs. female, young vs. old.

Ohloff, G. Scent and Fragrances. Translated by Wilhelm Pickenhagen and Brian
M. Lawrence. The Fascination of Odors and their Chemical Perspectives. Springer-Verlag,
Berlin, Germany, 1994. -- good history of smell. qualitative sensory perception.
increasing role of artificial fragrances in perfume.

Engen, T. (1988) The acquisition of odor hedonics. in Perfumery: The psychology
and biology of fragrance, van Toller, Steve and Dodd, George H., Eds. London,
New York: Chapman & Hall. -- in general associated. but not always.

Herz, R.S. Are Odors the Best Cues to Memory? A Cross-Modal Comparison of Associative
Memory Stimuli. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (Nov 30, 1998) 855,
670-674. -- odors are equivelant to other stiumuliin their ability to elecit
accurate recall but that odor-evoked memoriesare always more emotional.

Herz, R.S. Emotion experienced during encoding enhances odor retrieval cue
effectiveness. American Journal of Psychology (Winter 1997), Vol. 110, No.4,
489-505 -- heightened emotion (nervousness) during encoding with an ambient
odor can enhance the effectiveness of that odor as a cue to memory.

Herz, R.S., and Cupchik, G.C. The Emotional Distinctiveness of Odor-evoked
Memories. Chemical Senses 20:517-528, 1995.-- odor invoked memories found
to be more emotional. and if cue for recall hedonically congruent with painting
then memory of original emotional experience enhanced.

van Toller, S. (1988) Emotion and the Brain. in Perfumery: The psychology and
biology of fragrance, van Toller, Steve and Dodd, George H., Eds. London, New
York: Chapman & Hall. - by which he means, of course, emotion and smell
and hte brain. EEG stuff, etc.

Cain, William S. (1977) Differential sensitivity for smell: "Noise"
at the Nose. Science 195(4280) Feb. 25th, 796-798. -- basically, two smells
have to be different by 25-33% intensity to notice the difference.

Lawless HT. (1986) Multidimensional scaling. in L. Meiselman & RS Rivlin (eds)
Clinical measurement of taste and smell p86-103 New York.-- I understand
the idea, but I don't understand how it actually happens. Is it really just
unqualified scales? Don't get it. But interesting.

I. Problems with smell research
1 - orthonasal not retronasal
2 - predominance of intensity vs. quality perception
3 - more than smell: trigeminal etc.
A. Requirements for comprehensive theory of odor perception
1 - number is quite large
2 - must address changes as a function of experience
a - so there may be no odor primaries
b - f(domain expertise)
3 - must address emotional response
conjectures:
1 - traditional feature models of pattern recognition may not apply
a - odors may be recognised as whole patterns
b - these complex patterns become simple: 'coffee'
2 - prototype/family resemblance difficult to test
3 - hierachies are importatn but we don't know why.
- and people are all different
II Detection and Threshholds
A - Measurement of Thresholds
- "In a systesm that is characterized by variability -- variability within
individuals, across individuals, and within the stimulus -- it seems dangerous
to put too much stock in a measure which can be interpreted as a single concentration
value, above which there are sensations and below which there are not."
- Rabin & Cain 1986 found median intersession correlation of 0.61 using
snifing bottles
- Punter 1983 found media retest of 0.4 using olfactometer.
- stevens et al 1988 tested 3 subjects over an extended period of time, and
found massive fluctiations n thesensitivity of these subjects to three odorants.
in fact, the distribution of individual thesholds over 20 measurements was similar
to the variation observed in the population as a whole when many persons were
tested a single time.
B - Individual differences and anosmia

VI. Odor categories
A. impediments:
. historical review: odour description and odour classification,
by harper bate sith and land 1968.
impediments
1. tendency to name by pointing to objects in the real world
- basis on knowledge of origin not perceptual similarity
2 murphy 1987: olfactory psychophysics in finger & snow (eds), neurobiology
of taste and smell 251-273. points out that we have a tendency to do 7+/-2 categories
- hierarchial
- wine aroma wheel p138
- etc
- may all work best in local similar smells
- MDS lawless 1989

Patterson, Matthew Q. Stevens, Joseph C., Cain, William S. and Cometto-Muniz,
J. Enrique. (1993) Detection thresholds for an olfactory mixture and its three
constituent compounds. Chemical Senses 18:723-724. -- Complete aditivity:
the threshold for each of three mixed compounds was 1/3 of the original threshold.
So mixtures enhance sensitivity!

Richardson John TE, Zucco Gesualdo M. Cognition and Olfaction: A Review. Psyschological
Bulletin 1989 Vol 105 No 3 352-360. -- Overview. Humans can smell very well
but describe it badly, making it harder to remember. So linguistics is less
important than hedonic factors in olfactory processing.

Rospara, Jean-Pierre, and Fort, Jean-Claude. Coding
of odour quality: roles of convergence and inhibition. Network: Computation
in Neural Systems 5 (1994) 121-145. -- Coding of odor quality (=identification)
in the first two neuronal layers of olfactory systems, mainly using insects.
First level is the receptors, then the spacial activity pattern of the principle
neurons. Convergence and lateral inhiition. Etc.

Russell, MJ. (1976) Human Olfactory communication. Nature 260, 520-522. --
The T-shirt experiment: can you find your own? Can you find the man/woman? Everyone
can, pretty much. The infant experiment: do they turn towards or move away from
smell of a mother/their mother. Which they do, a bit after 2 weeks and totally
after 6 weeks.

SMITH RS, DOTY RL, BURLINGAME GK, MCKEOWN DA "SMELL AND TASTE FUNCTION
IN THE VISUALLY-IMPAIRED" PERCEPTION & PSYCHOPHYSICS 54 (5): 649-655 NOV
1993 --Surprisingly few quantitative studies have addressed the question
of whether visually impaired individuals evidence, perhaps in compensation for
their loss of vision, increased acuteness in their other senses. In this experiment
we sought to determine whether blind subjects outperform sighted subjects on
a number of basic tests of chemosensory function. Over 50 blind and 75 sighted
subjects were administered the following olfactory and gustatory tests: the
University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT); a 16-item odor
discrimination test; and a suprathreshold taste test in which measures of taste-quality
identification and ratings of the perceived intensity and pleasantness of sucrose,
citric acid, sodium chloride, and caffeine were obtained. In addition, 39 blind
subjects and 77 sighted subjects were administered a single staircase phenyl
ethyl alcohol (PEA) odor detection threshold test. Twenty-three of the sighted
subjects were employed by the Philadelphia Water Department and trained to serve
on its water quality evaluation panel. The primary findings of the study were
that (a) the blind subjects did not outperform sighted subjects on any test
of chemosensory function and (b) the trained subjects significantly outperformed
the other two groups on the odor detection, odor discrimination, and taste identification
tests, and nearly outperformed the blind subjects on the UPSIT. The citric acid
concentrations received larger pleasantness ratings from the trained panel members
than from the blind subjects, whose ratings did not differ significantly from
those of the untrained sighted subjects. Overall, the data imply that blindness,
per se, has little influence on chemosensory function and add further support
to the notion that specialized training enhances performance on a number of
chemosensory tasks.

Stevens JC, Cain WS and Burke RJ. (1988) Variability of olfactory thresholds.
Chemical Senses v.13, p.643-653.-- Three subjects over an extended period
of time; found massive fluctuations in the sensitivity of these subjects to
three odorants . In fact the distribution of indivudal thresholds over 20 measurements
was similar to the variation observed in a population as a whole when many subjects
were tested a single time.

Youngentob SL, Kurtz DB, Leopold DA, Mozell MM, and Hornung DE. (1982) Olfactory
Sensitivity: Is there laterality? Chemical Senses 7(1). -- Left handed people
are strongly more likely to have a more sensitive left nostril; right handed
people are weakly more likely to have a stronger right nostril.

Specific Anosmia

Amoore, John E. A Plan to Identify most of the Primary Odors. Olfaction: Volume
III.? p159-171. Psychophyiscs and sensory coding. -- Identify them through
finding what people can't smell. Comes up with 44 categories. Lists others.
(" I think this is the International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste (3rd
: 1968 : 1969 Rockefeller University)"?

Pelosi, Paolo and Viti, Raffaella. (1978) Specific anosmia to l-carvone: the
minty primary odour. Chemical Senses and Flavour 3, 3, 331-7.-- But we're
only talking a couple of dilution steps, not total anosmia.

Whissell-Buechy, D., Amoore, JE. Odour-Blindness to Musk: Simple Recessive
Inheritance. Nature Vol 242 March 23 1973. -- Musk specific anosmia inheritance
and prevelance in population matches that which one would expect in an X-chromosome
simple recessive. "Isovaleric acid anosmia is common (9.4%) in N=77 Negroes
and uncommon (1.4%) in our sample of N=849 Caucasians."

Wright, RH. (1978) Specific Anosmia: A clue to the olfactory code or to something
much more important? Chemical Senses and Flavour 3(2).-- unsurprisingly,
looks at Amoore's specifica anosmia work in the context of Wright's vibrational
theory. Makes the point that "It is only within the last century that communcal
sanitation has enabled such communities to do away with an all-pervading stench.
McCord and Witheridge point that as recently as about 1860 the Thames near London
became anaerobic and putrid and the city was plagued by clouds of hydrogen sulfide
and other malodorous substances. Thus, until very recenty indeed, communal living
was incompatibile with any refined discrimination of odorous signals, which
could therefore play no more than a minor role in human affairs." Yeah?
I'm not convinced. What about animals? Dogs for example, who have been domesticaed
for quite a while now...

Wysocki, Charles J, Dorries, Kathleen M, and Beauchamp, Gary K. (1989) Ability
to perceive andostenone can be acquired by ostensibly anosmic people. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America, Genetics,
Vol 86, pp 7976-7978, October. -- Which we would expect since anosmia could
be olfactory epithelium and andostenone jacobson's organ, no? But their theory
is otherwise; since olfactory epithelium cells are replaced relatively rapidly,
by repeated exposure then it can be encouraged to grow more cells of that appropriate
type. Interesting.

Chemistry of Smell

Cain, William S. (1975) Odor Intensity: Mixtures and Masking. Chemical Senses
and Flavor 1 339-352. -- Mixing 1-propanol and n-amyl butyrate. Perceived
intensity of the mixture was less than the combination, and sometimes even is
less the concentration of one of them alone.

Cain, William S., and Drexler, Milton. (1974) Scope and Evaluation of Odor
Counteraction and Masking. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. v237
p427-439. -- So generally two smells smell less bad than just the one.

Laing DG and Willcox ME. (1983) Perception of components in binary odour mixtures.
Chemical Senses 7(3/4).-- trans-2-hexenal and trans-2-decaenal. Confirms
that total intensity of a mixture is less than sum of two.

Smell Classification Schemes

Amoore, John E. A Plan to Identify most of the Primary Odors. Olfaction Volume
III.? p159-171. Psychophyiscs and sensory coding. -- Identify them through
finding what people can't smell. Comes up with 44 categories. Lists others.

US 4,582,492 Etter, Robert, Neumiller, Phillip. Assignee: S.C. Johnson &
Son. Method for behavior modification
using olfactory stimuli. April 15, 1986.--so you have a nasty smelling
scratch-and-sniff on one hand and when you feel the urge to pick your nose or
smoke or bad habit of your choice you scratch it and then when you stop feeling
the urge you scratch the good one and it smells nice.

US 4,905,112 Rhodes, S.W. Scent Cassette.
Feb 27, 1990. -- Let's put a smell output device in a cassette tape. So that
people don't have to take their eyes off the road to identify a cassette in
the car. [sic] Well, at least it's conveying information through smell.

US 5,716,011 Barbier, JP. Assigned to L'Air Liquide, S.A. for L'Etude et L'Exploitation
des Procedes Gaurges Claude, Paris.
Process for diffusing an odoriferous substance. Feb 10 1998. -- 15+2
refs. Pressurized gas "An overoxygenation of a zone or of a medium may
indeed cause an activation of combustion phenomena, resulting in a degredation
of some materials such as electric motors." Good table of minimum concentrations
necessary to notice smells: you need 1000x more lemon than strawberry.

WO 00/15269 Aromix Technologies Ltd. Methods
and Apparatus for Odor Reproduction. Available at http://www.patents.ibm.com.--
Some kind of 'odorant fingerprint generator'... but then producing by scratching/burning/whatever
off a disc of smells.

W0 00/37092 Proctor & Gamble. Aromatherapy
in Irons. Valerian oil is good for headache and stomach cramps, while
nutmeg helps digestion. A small dose of alkyl phosphonic acid esters stops the
oils foaming and carboxyl-containing polymers stop the mix staining clothes.
Neroli oil acts not only as an antidepressant but also an aphrodisiac.

Abramson, Ronna. Sniff-Company Digiscents Is a Scratch. The Standard, 11 April
2001. -- Digiscents announced that it is shutting down and laying off all
employees.

Digiscents. Letter accompanying mousepad. Dated July 2000. -- Our device
is not availiable at this time for beta testing by developers. We promise that
when they are availiable, you will be the first to know.

SingleSenx Sampler. Dated 10/17/00. Hockey-puck sized, serial connection. Heated
up upon plugging into serial port (without any software running). Inside is
single wax, smells of ~hotel soap when heated up. Software downloaded, run,
no effect. "is a single activation device" and "Top of device
may get slightly warm. This Sampler should be used within seven days within
[sic] receipt of this device." on accompanying letter.